Think Different--pt. 2

            Last week, we began by talking about marriage, community, the mission of Israel and of the Church. We also noted that God spoke to the Apostle Peter in a vision, telling him, in essence, to think differently about those God desires to invite into His community of faith.

            Bringing Gentiles into the Kingdom had "blown the fuses" of the Jews. The question in the New Testament would prove to be: would it blow the fuses of the New Testament Church? Could the Jewish Christians welcome the Gentile Christians? Could the Jewish Christians place God's agenda over their own preferences? It would mean fellowshipping those who prove to be extremely different.

            Recently, our family attended a wedding. The groom was the son of parents with we served as missionaries to Argentina. The groom’s dad officiated the ceremony.

One of the things he emphasized was a bride and groom cannot focus on individual happiness in marriage. They cannot obsess with individual wants. Each must focus on Jesus. Jesus’ Kingdom must transcend all things—even the marriage. (“Seek ye first the Kingdom of God…”)

The starting step to making a marriage work is to have the Kingdom of God as the goal transcending a couple’s marriage. Man and wife are looking UP to Jesus and His Kingdom. Everything is about “how do we help the Kingdom in this marriage?” It is a lot easier to find unity in marriage when SERVING the Kingdom is the primary goal.

            The problem for Israel was that seeking the Kingdom first was not the goal that transcended their lives; their own personal agendas had superseded God’s Kingdom. That led to division and their own destruction.

            And so, in Acts chapter ten, God was handing over to a new community of people this mission yet to be fulfilled. The new community was called the Church. To fulfill this mission in love and unity, they would have to elevate the Kingdom of Jesus and His will as the primary goal above all else.

            Jesus wanted more people to come into his kingdom. He wanted them to grow in his kingdom. And so much of what you read about in the New Testament having to do with unity and love, division and discord, is this struggle between the Jewish Christians and the Gentile Christians.

            Sometimes these concerned non-negotiables. I Cor. 6:9-11 offers an example of attitudes and morals that could not be compromised. But passages such as Romans 14 and 15 call upon these churches to make decisions that will help build young Christians in the Kingdom. These were negotiables.

Paul typically does not give them the answers. He gives them a framework for negotiating the negotiables.  Hence, these Christians were to make decisions that were to help these who were new to the faith, be able to stay in the faith, so that they could be formed by the faith.

            This meant that for some of the questions addressed, Christians had to put aside their personal agendas, their personal preferences, their personal comfort zones, even their personal understandings of God's teaching in Scripture (unless it was clearly connected to salvation) for the sake of Jesus and His kingdom.

You know, the biggest disagreement I've ever seen in a church might have been the one I saw Argentina years ago. We were planting congregations in different parts of the city, and for a while one met in our home.

We met on Sunday afternoons at three o'clock. One Sunday, we had our assembly, followed by a Bible study, which was followed by our monthly family meeting.

Somebody suggested that we change the assembly time to Sunday mornings. That started a huge fight.

            It was so bad that one of my teammates finally said, “Stop! Let's table this and talk about it next week after the assembly and Bible study.”

            Well, it just so happens that this brother was the one who was supposed to bring the sermon the next week. He preached out of Philippians chapter two, 1 So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, 2 complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. 3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. 4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others….

            When it was time for the family meeting, everyone had a suggestion about when to meet, and no one suggested the time that he or she had originally proposed. Everyone suggested a time that was beneficial for someone else.

            I will never forget my teammate taking us to Philippians to help us understand how you place the mind of Christ–the mind of the Kingdom–above all else. In the end, isn't it the Kingdom that matters the most? In that case, we had to learn to think different when it came to starting times for assemblies.

            If I can paraphrase an acquaintance paraphrasing Martin Luther King, I have a dream that someday, on the same pew, will be sitting a woman wearing a burqa, alongside an elderly woman wearing a hat and earrings, alongside a young man wearing a nose ring, alongside a middle-aged man in a three-piece suit, alongside a person who likes to sing new songs, alongside a person who likes to sing old songs, alongside a person who is emotionally expressive, alongside a person who is emotionally reserved… and all of these people bringing into the assembly different cultures and different ways of viewing things.

All of that would be okay–because the glue that holds everybody together in love and unity is the Kingdom of God, which is above all.

           

Five Things I Think I Think (with a nod to Peter King for this idea)

1. Curse you John Feinstein! You came out with another book I cannot put down—One on One. In it, you describe in exquisite detail your behind-the-scenes activities writing about sports these past thirty years. Especially fascinating is your account of your time with Bob Knight writing A Season on the Brink. I hate it when a book absorbs my attention—please stop writing them.

2. A lot of people got the Super Bowl they wanted. I cannot help but pick the Giants.

3. Texas Rangers—I believe in Yu Darvish because I believe in the judgment of Nolan Ryan.

4. Yesterday, I preached on Hebrews 2:1, which talks about drifting away from Jesus. I promised my church yesterday I would place a link to the Casting Crowns’ video SLOW FADE—a cool video and a great song. Here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QASREBVDsLk

5. Saturday marked 39 years of Roe v. Wade; yet, I still believe in the future. Most stats I see show younger people growing increasingly more pro-life. Someday, I predict, culture will place the stigma on the pro-choice position that it has placed on the old Jim Crow laws.